WILD: 1.living or growing in a natural state. 2. enthusiastic 3.turbulent 4.not easily controlled
5.reckless WORLD: 1.the earth 2.the universe 3.mankind
4.people, generally the public 5.some part of the earth 6.individual experience, outlook 7.a large amount
THIS BLOG is Roxanne's natural, enthusiastic, sometimes turbulent, not easily controlled, occasionally reckless individual experience with a large amount of the earth and the general public, and her outlook on the universe and mankind.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

I am overwhelmed at how blessed I am. Shall I tell you some of the many ways I have been blessed in the past few
years?My father died of a heart attack on the same day I found out my husband had
been unfaithful to me for all seven years of our marriage. I went through a divorce after four more long painful years of praying
desperately for God to keep it from happening. I had to give up the ministry I had with my husband on the mission field of
Nepal and lost all the work and relationships I had invested in there for
years. I had to move out of my dream house into an apartment in a bad neighborhood.
I had to go back to work after being a full time mom for all of my children’s
lives. I had to endure the stigma of being the “bad guy” because I divorced
my husband.I've had to live was the ongoing stigma of being a divorced single mom.My mother and my Baptist pastor step-dad both died on the same day in a
murder/suicide after refusing to speak to me for several years prior to their
deaths. After my divorce, after seven years of commitment to a local church, it was determined I “did not have the right vision” to continue to serve. That was just a few months ago.

I responded to loss of my beloved
mission field of Nepal (and to the fire for missions in my heart that just
wouldn’t go out) by finding another missions ministry to serve with, another country to work in, another
people to love.After four years of working with this
ministry, I find I am again, shall we say, “incompatible.”(There is no appropriate way to further
explain publically the pain I feel over this situation, so I will leave it
there.)That was just last week, right after
returning from my latest trip overseas.

Wait.I thought you said blessings.Are you being sarcastic and bitter? Are you ranting against the hypocrites of the
world?Are you trying to publically
expose people you are mad at or having a passive-aggressive online pity party in
order to get sympathy? Nope.I’ve done plenty of ranting over the years, don’t get me wrong.(Not to mention last week.) And cussing and fussing
and crying and raging interspersed with periods of checking out emotionally and
lying in bed staring dully at the walls.And plenty of asking why.Stuff along
the lines of, “Why me, God?Why me?I’m not
a bad person.I only wanted to serve
You.I only wanted to be a wife, to be a
mom, and to be a missionary.And when those
dreams fell apart, instead of getting angry and bitter, I picked up the pieces,
glued them back together and went on. And then they got jerked out of my hands and
smashed again. And again.

I could understand why this kind of pain would keep coming to me if I was living
in sin.If I had given You the middle finger
after getting screwed by my (fill in the blank) Christian parents, Christian
husband, numerous Christian pastors, leaders, counselors, etc, and gone off to find selfish pleasure
somewhere, abandoned my faith, forgotten my responsibility to my kids, left the
church, ignored missions and rejected You, it would have made sense.But I didn’t do any of those things.I keep trying to do what was right even when I had been done wrong.And You continually reward this effort by letting
more pain come into my life?Really?I haven’t hit the life
time pain quota yet?Why did you let me get into these relationships with people, churches, and
ministries where You knew I would get so deeply hurt?I was seeking Your will.I was asking for direction.You could have stopped me. You could have
stopped them. You could have ‘shut doors’. ”And, of course it gets personal when there is a person perpetrating the
pain.And my questions start going
something like, “How can You let him treat me this way?How can You let a so-called Christian (parent,
husband, pastor, leader) get by with this?Why isn’t someone holding him/her accountable?You see how many people he/she is hurting in
Your name- why don’t You stop him? Are You not my defender? Are You not all
powerful?Are You not the righteous
Judge?”Here’s the deal.If you ask those
questions long enough and if somewhere in the swirling morass of your pain you
actually have a miniscule part of you that wants a real answer and not just
pain relief…Look out.When you start invoking God’s justice, look out.You are going to get an answer from God Himself, and it is not going to be
what you expect.Because if you pound on
God’s chest with your fists and scream long enough, He will eventually oblige
you.He will wrap His hands firmly around
your wrists and force you to look into His eyes. And then there is no looking away, no pulling away, no changing your mind
about the whole thing.You pushed
through the outer courts of your offense into God’s bedroom after visiting
hours were over, busted down the door and demanded an immediate answer to your
innermost pain.And why did you do this?What is that
innermost pain? Regardless of what happened
to you (yes, I know you've been through crap too), I believe it is this- You believed in God’s love for you, and although
your circumstances deny that reality, you won’t give up on that belief.

A

nd that’s why He’s going to answer you.

Y

ou see, I speak from experience.I do
still believe God loves me in spite of all the things that have happened to me.
And so, in the face of this very paradox, I have thrown my tantrums and
demanded that God meet my gaze and speak to me.And when He does, I am undone.The
pain of that gaze is the sweetest agony, simultaneously most terrible and most welcome.
It relieves the fear that He won’t look
at me at the same time it feels like it is killing me- because the fear I feel
in God’s Holy Presence is better than the greater fear of being ignored by Him.
At that moment of anguishing intimacy, God never speaks to me about what
someone else did.He doesn’t even have
to speak.He only looks into MY soul,
and I see it reflected in His eyes, from His point of view back to me.Because I am the one who busted down His door.I’m the one who is here looking into His eyes,
not anyone else.There is no one else’s
heart in this room to reveal but mine.And here is where I begin to see things from a different point of view.I say begin, because I can still only claim
to have seen through a glass darkly, but at that moment of illumination in the
eyes of my Creator I see just how dark my vision has been and catch a glimmer
of the light piercing my sinful consciousness.

Here is where it begins: I see my
self-righteous attitude of entitlement in the echo of my questions.“God, I’ve been “good,” so You owe me good in return.I deserve
better.I’m not like those people who used a dysfunctional
family or a bad marriage as an excuse to live sinfully and selfishly.I stayed in church.I homeschooled my kids.I didn’t even seek a second marriage but
solaced myself with Christian service instead.I should have sufficiently earned
Your guarantee that things would work out well for me because of all these
brownie points.And didn’t those right
choices mean I was under the umbrella of Your protection from getting hurt
again?”Can somebody say filthy rags?How
about Pharisee?I’m ashamed that the next thing that dawns on me as I look into God’s eyes that
nothing less than such terrible emotional agony could drive me to this point of
busting down God’s door and demanding His attention.Because until I got into this much pain… I
didn’t care enough to come here.I only
came because I had a terrible need for emotional relief, not because I love God
enough to come of my own pain-free will.I didn’t knock gently, come in quietly and put my head on His chest to be
with Him for the sake of bringing Him pleasure. So basically I’m seeking God selfishly as pain relief and a fixer of
problems.But then, it dawns.It was my pain
that brought me here.And, I’M
HERE.I’m in God’s Presence. Nothing else matters but Him right now WHICH
IS THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALL ALONG.Because as long as everything was going well- life, relationships, church
and ministry- I didn’t (oh God, forgive me!) have time to seek His face. Instead I jumped out of bed, said a
quick prayer, checked Facebook, made coffee and went charging into my day. And
because these were all good things I
was busy with- homeschooling, church work, missions work in Africa, relationships
with Christian friends, talking with them about
God… I was substituting good things for the best thing.And it wasn’t until the good things, and my dreams to do good things, hit
the fan and got chopped up and bloody and splattered all over the walls that in
my despair I turned my full attention to the Best Thing. He was standing
in the middle of the room all this time, waiting for me.So that means… all those bad things that happened… the betrayal, the
lies, the loss, the shame, the grief… and the rinse repeat cycle...…the loss of the good things I desired (and thought I deserved and had
earned by being good)- a good relationship with parents that loved me, a godly
marriage, a ministry in missions at my husband’s side, a position of service in
a healthy local church, a “second chance” opportunity to serve overseas…The many shattered dreams…They have driven me into face to face encounters with God that I might never
have entered into otherwise.And these face to face encounters with God have revealed my sin: My pride in my goodness and my performanceMy sense of entitlementMy idolatry of relationships with people other than God, my willingness to
be satisfied with lesser relationships than my one with Him as long as things
are going well.I have been given the opportunity to repent and put those things on the
altar.Therefore, how can I not call these events blessings?They have brought me face to face with God,
again and again, in encounters of Divine intimacy and purging many never
experience.Because when you see God, really see Him, even for a moment, EVERYTHING it
took to get you there is worth it, no matter how painful.Yes.I am incredibly blessed.

(In the spiritual
grieving journey I have been on this week, I have found a great deal of challenging
applicable truth in the book "Shattered Dreams" by Larry Crab, and am super
grateful to my friend who listened to God and gave it to me.I am also indebted to the few select friends
who have been witnesses to my cussing and fussing and crying and raging, and
who have pulled me out of the bed (virtually and literally) when I stayed too long staring at the wall. I'm extra grateful for the grace that has been extended to me by my
children. Mostly though, I'm grateful to God who makes sure I have just enough human support at these times, but not so much that I forget what the whole point is- to come to Him.)

About Me

Single mom who has the audacity to live a full life by homeschooling her three kids, being a midwife, exploring the world, having lots of wonderful life-friends, and drinking coffee and eating chocolate without restraint.